


Things omitted in books

by apricity



Category: Pan Am
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-23
Updated: 2011-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-27 21:35:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apricity/pseuds/apricity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura has to give her credit, Colette’s grin can be even more wicked than Maggie’s sometimes.</p><p>Colette and Laura finish the debriefing in Milan, some time before 1x08. Implied Dean/Colette.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things omitted in books

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Angearia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angearia/gifts).



Laura is three glasses of wine in and has been fidgeting like she wants to go somewhere or do something since her sister left after the first round, muttering the distracted excuses Colette has come to expect from her.

 

The staccato punctuated hum of Italian in the background slows to a lull for a moment and Maggie immediately pronounces the bar a complete bore. Colette watches Laura pick up her purse and begin rummaging through it noncommittally as Maggie loudly asks the two men, whom she seemed to have picked up in the hour or so they’d been apart between the airport and the bar, where they would be off to next.

 

While the two men argue, somehow managing to get their cufflinks to catch the dim light in the room with every gesture, Maggie turns to Colette with a raised eyebrow almost as ostentatious as the discussion going on behind her.

 

Colette grins in response and shakes her head airily, raising a hand to call the waiter for another drink. Laura watches her and slowly settles back into her seat, making some excuse to Maggie and feigning interest in the crowd around them.

 

Colette doesn’t even have a chance to try the wine before Laura pounces.

 

‘Is it really like that?’

 

‘Is what?’ Laura watches the look of amused confusion spread across Colette’s face; knit eyebrows and half a smirk. _Oh god,_ she thinks, _please don’t make me explain._

 

‘Paris.’

 

Colette smiles into her glass before glancing back up to meet Laura’s wide-eyed stare. It had flitted across her face every few minutes during her first weeks with the crew, and had made Colette want nothing more than to take her under her wing. But Kate was there to scold her, and Maggie was there to push her buttons and her boundaries; between the two of them they seemed to have most of the job covered. And for all that they were two sisters and _Maggie_ , this was the most at home she’d ever felt with a crew. So she can’t help but smile back into Laura’s gaze and appreciate it for the novelty it was becoming.

 

‘I’d think you could answer that for yourself, now that you’ve been there.’

 

‘No, I mean if… if you stay there. Have you ever stayed there? For longer than a lay over, you know? Before Pan Am. Did you go to school there? I mean, in Paris.’ The words came tumbling out of her so fast that when they stopped Laura almost seemed surprised herself by how abrupt it sounded.

 

Colette laughs, its that soft, warm laugh from somewhere deep in her throat that Laura immediately associates with the other woman, the sound she waits for whenever she sees her smile. It gives her the sense that there is some secret being shared, but that its sophisticated somehow, not like when she and Kate used to giggle together in their sheet-tent after school. This feels less like cotton and more silk.

 

‘Yes, I went to school there, for the very _most_ proper French education,’ she tilts her chin up and waves her hand in a small regal gesture that Laura is fairly certain she couldn’t imitate if she tried, ‘but I would have thought that was obvious.’

 

Laura has to give her credit, Colette’s grin can be even more wicked than Maggie’s sometimes. _Especially_ , when she was teasing her.

 

‘No, I…’ She looks around the room almost like she’s expecting her mother or some judgmental college ‘friend’ to be lurking in a corner; even here in Milan ‘I know you saw… I know that you saw it fall out of my bag.’

 

She’s a little embarrassed, more than a little drunk and absolutely incandescent with frustration at those little well-bred obstacles that still, _still,_ keep her from even knowing _how_ to just say what she means.

 

But Colette knows, it was hard to miss the flush that had crept up the blonde’s neck as the book had tumbled from her Pan Am bag.

 

If she wasn’t mistaken it was the same exact copy of _Tropic of Cancer_ , with the dog-eared corners, margins filled with minute pencil scratchings (illegible other than the frequent, emphatically dark exclamation points) and coffee stains, that Maggie had pressed conspiratorially into her hands on their third flight together.

 

‘Why don’t you ask Maggie? I think she might have more to say on that subject.’

 

Laura slumps back into her chair, her blouse crumpling and one curl falling out of place as she moves- the perfect antithesis of that model Pan Am stewardess from the Time cover.  She eyes Colette’s little smirk and wonders if she had been wrong. If that laugh spoke more of secrets kept than secrets shared.

 

‘I think Maggie is just always like that, it’s never the place that changes her, it’s the other way around, or at least she finds what she wants to find, but it’s… deliberate,’ She shifts in the chair and leans her head back, ‘and _exhausting_.’

 

There is that laugh again, and the promise of it is more than Laura can resist. She leans back across the table and fixes

 

‘Be honest with me,’ Laura punctuates the plea with a light tap on Colette’s wrist, ‘Did you ever see that side of the city, or feel it… pull at you, or change you?’

 

 _That has to be half her charm_ , Colette thinks, _that complete sincerity, to be able to earnestly ask something like that._ It certainly felt more disarming than any of Maggie’s theatrical flirting.

 

She thinks about Dean, about dancing in park squares, about the feeling of being comfortably lost and the smell of whiskey and cigarettes.

 

Laura waits, hearing her heartbeat thunder in her ears, half afraid that Colette would laugh and brush her off the way she knew Kate would.

 

‘In Paris, sometimes… I think you can act the way you want, like you’re anyone you want to be…’ her voice catches and her eyes flick to the window, ‘but it is never good to not let any place act on you.’

 

It isn’t really an answer to the question she’d asked, and Laura’s was staring at her so hard that she could almost feel the pressure somewhere below her diaphragm, and suddenly it really was too much.

 

She follows up with a much too bright, ‘Especially if you travel as much as we do.'

 

Laura smiles like she understands, almost as though saying it will be their secret, and lets the conversation settle into a companionable silence, foot bouncing to non-existent music.Colette scans the room, eyes darting up to Laura’s face when she thinks she isn’t looking, and wonders. It isn’t long before the Milan’s seemingly endless supply of immaculately dressed men offers up another happy distraction.

 

 


End file.
